The Mail On Sunday's next full album covermount promotion will be with Paul McCartney, which is quite a coup, though probably as much for Macca as for the tabloid, given that the former Beatle never has quite the record sales you might imagine given his profile, iconic status and sell out stadium tours. While last album 'Memory Almost Full' did better than most given the clever partnership with Starbucks, Music Week report that current UK sales sit at about 100,000 - pretty small compared to the 3 million copies the MoS will distribute. Whether the free Macca album will provide a sales spike for the paper remains to be seen - arguably the 100,000 potential extra readers who might have bought the paper for the CD already have it.
The free CD will come with the 18 May issue of the Mail, and was, alas, announced on the same day a music website declared Macca as the most irritating musician of all time. The surprising stat, given all the positive press for McCartney during the whole Mills divorce debacle, came from a poll of 2000 music fans by CD exchange website Music Magpie. Macca was voted more irritating that James Blunt who, of course, is a more predictable choice for the pop star that gets on people's nerves.
The top ten most irritating pop stars according to the survey were...
1. Sir Paul McCartney
2. James Blunt
3. Lilly Allen
4. Robbie Williams
5. Amy Winehouse
6. Bono
7. Cliff Richard
8. Pete Doherty
9. Joss Stone
10. Craig David
Commenting on the survey, Music Magpie's Craig Dawson told CMU: "It's easy for musicians to get very irritating very quickly. Macca has driven people up the wall with his 'holier than thou' approach to his divorce, two-fingered peace gesture and penchant for wearing trainers with suits. Despite being voted most irritating, all of the musicians in the top ten are extremely successful and are some of the best sellers on our site, so they must be doing something right! A lot of this comes down to overexposure and unfortunately Macca's mug has been in the press quite a lot over the last 12 months. On the flipside, Sir Cliff Richard is rarely in the media spotlight but still manages to rub people up the wrong way, which is perhaps down to his tedious Christmas repertoire that we have to suffer through every year".